Dr. Asanga Ranasinghe, Distinguished Research Scientist at Amarillo College, is pleased to announce the acquisition of a collaborative grant from the National Science Foundation likely to bolster the flow of AC STEM scholars to West Texas A&M University.

Ranasinghe said the $75,000 grant will be used to obtain an Ice Nucleation Cold Stage, an instrument for researching and teaching cloud microphysics in science and engineering classes. The NSF earmarked these particular funds to benefit minority-serving institutions.

Dr. Asanga Ranasinghe, Distinguished Research Scientist at Amarillo College, and Lisa Soper, instructional designer at AC’s Center for Teaching & Learning, soon will present findings of their collaborative research at a conference in Spain.

Ranasinghe and Soper have been invited to the 26th International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning (ICL) Sept. 26-29 in Madrid, where they will share the results of a study they conducted at AC on the viability of virtual science labs.

Community colleges are not often recognized as hotbeds of academic research, but at Amarillo College, once again a finalist for the nation’s foremost community college accolade – the Aspen Prize – research is a highly tangible pursuit.

The Amarillo College Foundation recently underscored the veracity of that assertion when, in support of its ongoing comprehensive campaign Badger Bold, it made a generous $250,000 bequest to establish the inaugural Distinguished Research Scientist endowment at AC.